It might be a cliche, but sometimes, a picture says more than a thousand words. Over the years, I've often talked about how the technology world is iterative, about how products are virtually always built upon that which came before, about how almost always, multiple people independently arrive at the same products since they work within the same constraints of the current state of technology. This elementary aspect of the technology world, which some would rather forget, has been illustrated very, very well in one of Samsung's legal filings against Apple.

The judge apparently doesn't want people to know that Samsung had already internally designed a touchscreen phone which was a rectangle with no keyboard, very similar to the iPhone, before the iPhone came out.

Regardless of what the judge wants, people will know this anyway, it will be common knowledge. If the judge insists that this common knowledge is ignored by the jury, it merely makes the judge look totally biased, and it guarantees Samsung will be able to appeal if they need to.